More funding, support for social workers needed as case loads grow and staffs decrease

Saturday

Jun 7, 2014 at 6:00 AM

As the state's embattled Department of Children and Family Services works to improve the way the agency is run, recent data shows the DCF office in Brockton and offices statewide have seen increased caseloads and a decrease in staffing.

Benjamin Paulin The Patriot Ledger @BPaulin_Ledger

BROCKTON – As the state’s embattled Department of Children and Family Services works to improve the way the agency is run, recent data shows the DCF office in Brockton and offices statewide have seen increased caseloads and a decrease in staffing.

The DCF came under fire in April following the death of Jeremiah Oliver, a 5-year-old Fitchburg boy who went missing and died while under the agency’s care.

In Brockton, the total number of cases the office was handling was 1,036 in December. By the end of March that number had grown to 1,246, a 20.3 percent increase, according to data provided by SEIU Local 509, the state social workers’ union.

During that same time period, the Brockton office lost two full-time staff positions.

Statewide, caseloads increased by 14.9 percent from December through March, while staffing decreased by 0.14 percent, according to SEIU 509.

Tierney said BAMSI does limited work with DCF, but a number of the children they deal with have DCF involvement.

“This is a system that continues to grow,” Tierney said. “The number of children and families involved continues to grow.”

Last week, the Child Welfare League of America released a report on the DCF in order to help identify and correct problems within the department.

“To prevent the deaths of children like Jeremiah, who come to the attention of DCF because of allegations of abuse and neglect, the Department must have the support of the community and its stakeholders to address the core issues that lead children and families to need DCF’s intervention and services,” the report states. “For many years, Massachusetts has not been attentive enough to these issues.”

The report concludes that although the DCF mishandled the Jeremiah Oliver case, there isn’t evidence that the department’s failure caused the boy’s death.

The report makes several recommendations for improving the DCF’s services, including a commitment to more funding, decreasing caseloads, unifying practices across regional offices and improving the technology the department utilizes.

Juliana Langille, executive director of Community Connections of Brockton, agrees with the recommendations in the report. Her office receives funding by the DCF.

She hopes to see an increase in funding that would allow for more social workers to be hired.

“We have 100,000 people in Brockton and we have five staff members,” Langille said. “When they (DCF) get a budget from the state, that’s all they can get. It would be great if DCF could get more funding to hire more people.”

Langille said the support services the social workers receive could also see improvement.

“The challenge is that they may need more support in terms of training and experience,” she said. “Day in and day out workers are exposed to very extreme stuff. A lot of times they don’t have a lot experience in dealing with those things.”

Langille said having social workers work more consistently with local non-profit groups might give them more insight into the communities they are working in.

“The non-profits tend to get a lot of the families that might be DCF cases,” she said. “When they go to peoples’ houses and see all the negative things, they could see the good things that happen in the community and that could change the perception of how people see families.”

Tierney said exposure to the difficult situations workers in the field can come across can lead to social workers getting burnt out.

“Our organization is looking closely at the issue of secondary trauma,” she said. “If staff are not supported and provided adequate tools and supervision they reach a point where they don’t even know why they don’t want to do it any more.”

She said that is something the DCF should begin looking into.

One thing Langille said to be wary of was the concern about the number of cases social workers receive.

“They don’t have control over how many cases they have,” she said. “It could be that more people are aware that they can call, or an increase in things happening.”

Benjamin Paulin may be reached at bpaulin@enterprisenews.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.